How to Grow Sugar Cane in Minecraft and Harvest It Fast

Plant sugar cane on grass, dirt, sand or mud that has water in one of the four blocks directly beside it (not diagonally). It grows one block at a time up to 3 blocks tall, with no light or bone meal needed. Break the top two blocks and leave the bottom one, and it grows back on its own.

Where it can go

The block under the cane has to be one of these:

• grass block, dirt, coarse dirt, rooted dirt, podzol or mycelium
• sand, red sand or suspicious sand
• moss block or pale moss block
• mud or muddy mangrove roots

That block then needs water, a waterlogged block or frosted ice directly north, south, east or west of it. A diagonal water block doesn’t count, and neither does water above. You can also stack cane on top of existing cane.

The water can be covered. Put a slab or a trapdoor over your water channel and the cane still grows, which is handy for walking across a farm without falling in.

If you remove the water, the cane pops off as an item on the next update. Same if you break the block underneath.

Finding your first cane

Wild sugar cane grows in patches on the shoreline of rivers, lakes and beaches, usually 2 to 4 blocks tall. It’s most common in deserts, where a patch generates in nearly every chunk that has water, and in swamps. You won’t find it in cherry groves, meadows, mountain peaks or caves.

Pick it all up. You only need one piece to start a farm, but a dozen saves you a lot of waiting.

How fast it grows

Growth runs on random ticks. The top block of a cane needs 16 of them before it adds a block, which works out to roughly 18 minutes per block on Java and 54 minutes on Bedrock on average. That’s an average; some canes grow twice in a few minutes and some sit for an hour.

A few things that matter:

• Light doesn’t. Sugar cane grows in the dark, so an underground farm works.
• The chunk has to be loaded. Cane only grows while you’re close enough for the game to tick it. If you leave for a long trip, it stops.
• Height caps at 3. A cane you planted stops at 3 blocks. Naturally generated cane can be taller, but yours won’t be.

Bone meal

Bone meal works on sugar cane in Bedrock only: one use grows it straight to full height. On Java, bone meal does nothing to sugar cane, so the size of the farm is the only way to get more.

A simple farm

The classic layout is a long row: dig a 1-wide water channel, and plant cane on both banks. Every block of channel feeds a cane on each side, so a 20-block trench gives 40 plants. For a bigger plot, repeat the pattern cane, water, cane, path: every row of cane touches a water row, and the path row gives you somewhere to walk.

Harvest by breaking the second block up from the ground. The block above it drops too, and the bottom piece stays to regrow. Breaking the bottom block wastes a cane you’d have to replant.

When you’re tired of doing that by hand, put an observer behind each cane facing the second block and a piston that breaks it when it grows. That’s the standard design covered in our automatic farm guide. Pistons destroy sugar cane rather than pushing it, so the cane drops as an item and you collect it with water or hoppers.

What to do with it

• Paper: 3 cane makes 3 paper, and paper goes into books, maps and firework rockets.
• Sugar: 1 cane makes 1 sugar, for cake, pumpkin pie, fermented spider eyes and potions of Swiftness.
• Emeralds: librarians buy paper, so a cane farm turns into a steady emerald source for trading with villagers.
• Composting: a 50% chance to raise a composter by one level, if you have more than you need.

A full set of 15 bookshelves needs 45 books, which is 135 cane, so plant more than you think you need.